That’s awesome! I’m glad to hear it’s been good for you, and it’s good seeing you around here again.

Thanks! I've gotten really interested in epigenetics and the social determinants of health, and particularly on the effects of early-life stress on later-life health. I'm especially into housing insecurity stress, and also, right now, kind of obsessed with how circadian disruption affects health. My MS thesis was on a circadian-derived reproductive process, which really got me hooked on circadian research. We have created an artificial year-round 16/8 photoperiod for ourselves, which is so different from our evolutionary photoperiod that I feel, given the strong influence of photoperiod on metabolism and reproduction, can't help but have disruptive effects, like imagine it was midsummer in Copenhagen. What is your body going to think it's time to do? It's gonna be all oh, shit, winter is coming! And this effect should be worse the more extreme our human-made photoperiod is. It's especially concerning that most Americans get only 6-7 hours sleep a night, and our indoor lighting has transitioned from mostly medium and long-wave to a lot of short-wave and full spectrum light, because that's the kind of light our brains use to determine how long the days are.

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

Glad to hear that you're on the mend. I didn't know you'd hurt your back. I've been taking atrocious amounts of Naproxen getting used to the job I'm doing. I highly recommended for muscle aches of all kinds. It's also an anti-inflammatory. But if you drink on it your insides will melt or something.

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You can't get out backward. You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting. If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation." - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing. It does something else entirely, or nothing at all. It's like voting."- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

wow. That’s a lot of really interesting stuff that is weirdly relevant to me! (I could probably be a damned case study in your epigenetics thing, and maybe unrelatedly???my sleep cycle is so broken that I just last night double-dosed on sedatives and only slept two hours despite desperately aiming for 7+.)

Anywhere you’re putting any of this out, or is it more of a general research (as opposed to scientific or academic) or saving for publication sorta deal right now? I’d love to read more about it all, as I said, it’s almost creepily relevant to my life.

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“I am that worst of all type of criminal...I cannot bring myself to do what you tell me, because you told me.”

Thanks! I've gotten really interested in epigenetics and the social determinants of health, and particularly on the effects of early-life stress on later-life health. I'm especially into housing insecurity stress, and also, right now, kind of obsessed with how circadian disruption affects health. My MS thesis was on a circadian-derived reproductive process, which really got me hooked on circadian research. We have created an artificial year-round 16/8 photoperiod for ourselves, which is so different from our evolutionary photoperiod that I feel, given the strong influence of photoperiod on metabolism and reproduction, can't help but have disruptive effects, like imagine it was midsummer in Copenhagen. What is your body going to think it's time to do? It's gonna be all oh, shit, winter is coming! And this effect should be worse the more extreme our human-made photoperiod is. It's especially concerning that most Americans get only 6-7 hours sleep a night, and our indoor lighting has transitioned from mostly medium and long-wave to a lot of short-wave and full spectrum light, because that's the kind of light our brains use to determine how long the days are.

I took last week off work to attend gardening horticulture classes at the local university, and one day I partook of a tour of the agriculture greenhouses.

At one point, the tour guide was showing off a greenhouse equipped with shades, and recounted how a researcher was having trouble getting a particular set of plants to flower, until she noted that the plants originated from Ecuador. So, they used the shades to produce a 50% day/night cycle, and the plants began flowering. (These greenhouses are above 52° N. Equal length days and nights aren't something we do here).

It would be interesting if individual (human) reactions to photoperiod was partially dependent on geographic origin. After all, lighter skin colour appears to be an adaptation to the amount of sunlight.

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"When I say 'engineering', I have unreasonable expectations. It must - as you know - look good in PADS AND give you plenty of help ducking and weaving in meetings. But it must also, at some distant point in time, function. If it does not, then you must accept that you are not in fact an engineer but instead an MBA. Hang your head in SHAME, sinner!"

wow. That’s a lot of really interesting stuff that is weirdly relevant to me! (I could probably be a damned case study in your epigenetics thing, and maybe unrelatedly???my sleep cycle is so broken that I just last night double-dosed on sedatives and only slept two hours despite desperately aiming for 7+.)

Anywhere you’re putting any of this out, or is it more of a general research (as opposed to scientific or academic) or saving for publication sorta deal right now? I’d love to read more about it all, as I said, it’s almost creepily relevant to my life.

My first incredibly boring paper on circadian-relevant hormonal pathways will be published as a collaboration sometime next year, but since I just transitioned from basic research to epidemiology last Fall, it's gonna be a while before any of my current work is published. In the meantime, this paper may be of interest to you (let me know if you're unable to access it and I'll see if I can find a version that isn't behind a paywall, it's not always clear whether it's paywalled or not on my end): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31026301

Hey, Nigel, awesome! If you ever want to talk to someone with severe social deficiencies, assloads of developmental stress as well as a tendency to go nocturnal, pm me.

Sounds like a laugh riot!

Seriously though, one of the reasons I'm so interested in this topic is that these issues you are experiencing are pervasive and increasing in our society. We tend to assume that health is driven by behavior, and it's just that in my behavioral neuroendocrinology training I started to see things the other way around.

I took last week off work to attend gardening horticulture classes at the local university, and one day I partook of a tour of the agriculture greenhouses.

At one point, the tour guide was showing off a greenhouse equipped with shades, and recounted how a researcher was having trouble getting a particular set of plants to flower, until she noted that the plants originated from Ecuador. So, they used the shades to produce a 50% day/night cycle, and the plants began flowering. (These greenhouses are above 52° N. Equal length days and nights aren't something we do here).

It would be interesting if individual (human) reactions to photoperiod was partially dependent on geographic origin. After all, lighter skin colour appears to be an adaptation to the amount of sunlight.

That is a very interesting question, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is true. After all, circadian clock programming is determined partially through DNA methylation, and differential DNA methylation may occur during pregnancy, priming the fetus' wake-sleep rhythms to match the mother's. Interestingly, the time of day you are born matters; night babies are at higher risk for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia than day babies, and there is evidence of circadian disruption in both those diseases.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is nowhere on earth a 16/8 photoperiod occurs naturally year-round.

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

I'm honestly glad all this horrible shit happened to me so I can have a fresh pair of eyes. Doktor Howl, did you try out Armageddon?

Not yet. I landed a consulting gig and the spare time I have has been used dragging teabilly Christian sharia law freaks around by the ankles.

It's stressful as hell, I hate independent work, so in case it does me in, I have decided to have my will tattooed on my torso. Given how long probate takes, and the need for a physical copy of the will, this means my relatives will have to freeze my body for the duration, and wheel my frozen carcass into a conference room or courthouse 3 times every two months or so. At some point during each proceeding, my naked hairy frozen arse will have to be flung on the table and stared at.